Sunday, 2 August 1998

Hotel Sorrento, Aug 2, 1998

Hotel Sorrento by
Hannie Rayson

HIT Productions at
Merlyn Theatre Malthouse until August 15, 1998

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Review Aug 2, 1998

Australian expatriates are an odd breed. When away, they may
complain about their adopted culture and defend their homeland to the death. On
returning home, all that patriotism vanishes and home becomes parochial and
uncultured.

In Hannie Rayson's very popular play, Hotel Sorrento,
expatriatism serves not only as an escape from Australian culture but as an
avoidance of grim family secrets.

The play focuses on three sisters who reunite at their
family home in Sorrento after a death. Hilary Moynihan (Janet Andrewartha) has
remained in Sorrento with her son (Samuel Johnson OK) and father, (John Flaus)
running a cafe and being everybody's support since her husband died in a car
accident ten years earlier.

Pippa (Christine Harris), the youngest sister, has returned
briefly from her advertising job in New York. Meg (Celia de Burgh) has lived in
London for ten years and her latest novel, Melancholy, has been nominated for
the Booker prize. The novel is the pivot of their mutual antagonism. Its narrative
and characters are clearly autobiographical, despite Meg's refusal to
acknowledge this.

Rayson addresses not only expatriatism and cultural cringe,
but also issues of love, loss and nostalgia. The ethics of plundering the lives
of one's family for literature are questioned, as are those of intrusive
journalism.

The writing is smart and the play well crafted with full
characters and rich comic dialogue. My only quibble is that the revelation of
the 'secret' is too rapid, rushing the play to a sudden end.

The performances are strong. Andrewartha is warm and
poignant as the stay-at-home Hilary and de Burgh is suitably maddening as the
hot headed over-achiever, Meg.

As her husband Edwin, Brian Lipson is the perfect meld of
loving partner, intellectual snob and awkward Brit. The two non-family members,
played by Jan Friedl and Ken Radley, provide us with outsiders' commentary on
the family which is nonetheless biased by their own obsessions.

This production is directed by David Latham who was,
ironically, responsible for Chekhov's Three Sisters last year. It starts slowly
but gathers momentum after interval when the real conflict escalates and
characters communicate more directly in the one location. The split stage of
the first half leaves the narrative feeling disconnected.

Judith Cobb's design provides multiple locations with its
old wooden pier and platforms. Real water on stage reminds us constantly of the
sea that eventually takes one of this fraught family.